The 16 Most Depressing Bright Eyes Songs of All Time (Number 1 Will Shock You!)

We've finally seen the release of the 8th Bright Eyes album (that's right, 8th) as well as maybe actually the final final Bright Eyes album this time, Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was (August 21, 2020). 

In celebration, here is a list of the 15 most depressing Bright Eyes songs.

When doing ruminations on the "saddest" Bright Eyes songs, the word "sad" could mean many many things. There are a lot of sad tunes that are really beautiful and leave you with a sense that things are going to be better for our little Conor Oberst in the future.

This is not that list.

This is a list of the songs that are the most depressing, most downer, no hope slogs that Bright Eyes has to offer us for when you need a good cry.

I DID make a few other playlists to go along with this post: the most heartbreaking Bright Eyes songs, the most surprisingly fun Bright Eyes songs, the most hopeful Bright Eyes songs, the most dirtbag Bright Eyes songs. Check them out here. 

Tracklist:
15. Arienette
14. Feb. 15th
13. It's Cool, We Can Still Be Friends
12. When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass
11. Going For The Gold
10. If Winter Ends
09. Don't Know When But A Day Is Gonna Come
08. Napoleon's Hat
07. A New Arrangement
06. The Big Picture
05. Hot Car in the Sun
04. A Spindle, A Darkness, A Fever and A Necklace
03. No Lies, Just Love
02. Padraic, My Prince
01. Amy in the White Coat
#1 W/ A BULLET? Scroll to see! 

 

Listen on spotify (embed below)

Read More ::

:: Read Less

4 Bonus Bright Eyes Playlists

 

These are four bonus playlists to compliment "The Most Depressing Bright Eyes Songs of All Time," found here.  I made these in celebration of the release of Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was (August 21, 2020). 

Listen to the playlists below:

Read More ::

:: Read Less

New DESAPARECIDOS: Interview with Conor Oberst from Huffington Post

Not too long ago, Conor Oberst wrote a song and filmed a video at the Arizona country border in protest against the state's immigration enforcement laws. The tune was "Coyote Song" and you can check it out here. The Huffington Post just published an excellent interview with Conor Oberst about the resurgence of DESAPARECIDOS. If you haven't heard their album Read Music/Speak Spanish, (which came out ten years ago apparently!) check it out right now. It's one of my favorite albums of all time. Hopefully, this anger at injustice will fuel another record.

Read the article from the Huffington Post below.

"I'll never understand how destroying families through deportation benefits our society."

Conor Oberst, the singer-songwriter who was the voice of a generation well before Lena Dunham took a stab at it, is now 32 years old. And though he's best known for Bright Eyes' aching and somber folk songs, he's angry.

He's angry because America is "destroying families through deportation," and because Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. is proud to be compared to the KKK. And when Oberst is upset, he doesn't rally a militia of Minutemen or over-zealous officers, he writes a punk-rock song.

And so, in the process of striking back against Arizona's continued harsh treatment of undocumented immigrants, Oberst recorded some new music with some old friends. Joining the lead singer on "MariKKKopa" -- which is debuting today exclusively on HuffPost Entertainment -- are Landon Hedges, Matt Baum, Denver Dalley and Ian McElroy. The original lineup of the Desaparecidos, Oberst's early-2000s post-hardcore band, is back.

The single -- which is available for purchase August 2 and is accompanied by "Backsell," another track -- features Oberst adopting the voice of anti-undocumented immigrant groups. The lyrics approach bloodthirst ("Drag them from their beds / Cause it's their turn for someone to get hurt") and offer a haunting look into the mentality Oberst suggests drives Sheriff Joe's police department.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Wanderlust: The Vision Quest:: A Traveling Mix

Published on thebomberjacket.com

When traveling alone, all the songs that you can fit in your pocket or in your car can become the best friend you could have. Sometimes the right songs can help block out the world and lull you to sleep on an uncomfortable bench during an airport layover. The right playlist can keep you awake and get you through the next 20 miles behind the wheel. The right melodies and lyrics can can give you something to focus on instead of the atrocious odor coming from the person next to you on the bus who clearly hasn’t showered once in his or her entire life.

I’ve lived in Spain for two years now, in both the “la españa de verdad” (the “real” small town Spain of Albacete) and in a metropolitan cultural center (Barcelona). This June, I’ll be filling a backpack with as much underwear as I can and backpacking from Budapest, Hungary to Berlin, Germany. Music has been my constant companion on my trips across Europe and I’ve had my share of trips but this will be my longest by far. For me, traveling seems to ring truest in the form of a folk song. Not a regurgitated ’60s culture anthem, but more of the idea or concept of a folk song.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Descending the Circles of Bright Eyes Hell: The Early Albums

Published on thebomberjacket.com

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
—Carl Jung

There are videos on youtube of Conor Oberst, frontman of Bright Eyes and various other projects, from when he was in his tween years. One in particular comes to mind of a scrawny boy with a high crackling voice and round John Lennon glasses in a record store in Omaha, Nebraska, over-excitedly ranting about a record store he loved. There was this image of Conor Oberst with that trademark messy done-at-home haircut, moping in the basement of his parent’s house, surrounded by books and records, writing music and wailing through tear-stained and clenched eyelids. It’s a scene like a the lyric from Letting Off the Happiness’ “The City Has Sex,” which goes, “There’s a kid in the basement with a four track machine / and he’s been strumming and screaming all night down there / The tape hiss will cover the words that he sings / They say it’s better to bury your sadness.” It’s a charming image, but it’s one that Oberst has never really been able to shake, despite all his new sounds, solo or side projects and haircuts.

Even to this day, it seems like Bright Eyes is quickly disregarded by many as being sad emo music made by a little boy, when there’s really much more to it than that. Now, looking back at those early albums twelve and then some years later, hopefully a more accurate perspective on Bright Eyes can emerge. The real relevance of the band is much more than just well penned sorrow. The lyrics are loaded with poetry that is severely self-conscious, self-deprecating, self-absorbed and just about any other hyphenated "self" term one could imagine. Every album is an introspective adventure, an psychological journey into deeply understanding oneself and one’s emotions. It's something like Carl Jung's methods or Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,“ which relates mythological odysseys to psychology and is the basis for the Hollywood movie formula. Or it could even be like Dante’s excursion into hell in “The Inferno.” The adventure is most evident on Fevers & Mirrors, as the album's main focus is self-examination, but it’s also present on each record. The lyrics may be seem solipsistic, but that’s what makes it universal, as everyone has to face the reality of themselves in the mirror at one time or another. It makes the music into something helpful to listen to for anyone going through an emotional, existential or identity crisis…or maybe enabling those emotions is the worst possible choice. It’s always hard to decide. Yet, that’s another constant theme to Bright Eyes songs, the flexibility and confusion of truth.

May 1, 2012 saw the last round of reissues of Bright Eyes’ early releases; albums and EPs that were only previously available on vinyl compiled into a boxed set. The records represent some of Bright Eyes’ most inaccessible material and as such, this group of reissues is probably a bad starting point to dive into as a first exposure to the band. As the records get progressively easier to listen to, even going backwards through a discography mimics that inward adventure, with each one becoming another descent into a deeper circle of self-inflicted hell. So, it’s probably better to start with a more recent release and work backward. The easiest way for the likes of casual listeners to get sucked in might be from the upright pop and conscious attempt at positivity of the most recent The People’s Key or the messy full member collaboration of Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band’s Outer South or maybe when his warbling voice is blended with Jim James and M. Ward on Monsters of Folk. Whatever the starting point, it’s better to let curiosity slowly tug you backwards, and downward, after that.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Mango Nebula 2011 Quilt :: Most Listened to Records of the Year Collage

See also the Mango Nebula 2010 Quilt

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes:: Live Recordings EP

MP3: Bright Eyes :: "Bowl of Oranges"

Bright Eyes :: Live Recordings EP
July 4th 2011
Saddle Creek Records

thisisbrighteyes.com

Click here to hold this.

---

Bright Eyes released a live EP compiled from their current tour in support of their latest, The People's Key. It's a limited release, only available through HMV. This live version of "Bowl of Oranges" must've been easy to do for their last tour, considering the pit of synths Conor Oberst was buried in. The lyrics also make a bold change. Instead of "That's why I'm singing 'baby,'" he switches that last word to 'Maria.'
Read the Mango Nebula review of The People's Key here.
Also, check out the star spangled video for "Jejune Stars" below.

Tracklist::
1. Firewall
2. Shell Games
3. Ladder Song
4. Arc Of Time
5. Bowl Of Oranges
6. Lover I Don’t Have To Love




to love and to be loved_

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Refried Ice Cream :: Witness to the Storm

MP3: Refried Ice Cream :: "Halo"

Refried Ice Cream :: Witness to the Storm
October 2010
Team Love

Click here to hold this.

refriedicecream.com

Mango Nebula review of The People's Key.

---

Refried Ice Cream should now be well associated with Bright Eyes, as frontman Danny Brewer contributed the eerie and apocalyptic love espousing spoken word genesis recorrections to The People's Key. And yes, their music is just as odd and interesting. Witness to the Storm is the tenth album out by the father son Texas duo and first release on Team Love, the label started by Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Nate Krenkel. Time could be wasted trying to explain the 1970's in dimension X sound or saying that the Roky Erikson inspired style that verges on Jandek greatness, but what describes the band best is a nice little story blurb on the Team Love website that you can read below. The group is quite politically conscious as well, in their lyrics and on their website, which is like a late nineties free webpage creator disaster and is thoroughly entertaining to explore.

"It was 109 degrees on the ground the afternoon we flew into El Paso. I could see the dust rising in angry swarms from the flat restricted zones of Fort Bliss while the murder capital city out the window on the other side of the aisle was like an extremely sick and overweight sister I never had who had grown so obese she could no longer rise from the couch and dip her ankles into the Rio Grande.

I had heard from the boys in the Mystic Valley about a father/son rock band somewhere to the east of El Paso near Tornillo or Fabens. They were outsiders from another time, an old man with a Harley engine for a heart and his son with an apple pipe affixed to his lips. They had a sound that had turned off Interstate 10 somewhere around 1971 and never looked back, crushing the Texas mountain laurel and hollyhock with amphetamine laced VU riffs that drone on ad infinitum in search of buried gold and healing waters. It was under the shade of an almond tree that I finally met Refried Ice Cream.

Denny had injured his back repairing a motorcycle and his son Josh kept reiterating the importance of good health. They sipped ice water and spoke of far away things, of dimensional parasitic races and amputated feet that grew back. They had driven over from their compound that was a bastion of priceless guitar amps and discarded metal detritus, where Janis Joplin’s car and a brand new Imac shared the same plot of dust with a family of hippie lizards and a caldron of extinct moeritherium stew. Like their music, their conversation leapt from the drone of linear time to the heights where the human psyche cracks and the blue-sky floods in, from a simple government plot to control the populace, to an eternal quest for a bottle from god’s private stash.

When our time together was over my faith lay shattered and scattered among the empty beer bottles was a copy of, as Josh described, their latest series of jams, their new album, “Witness To The Storm.” The first song gave me the impression I was pinned to the underside of the engine hood of a flaming red Super Bee. Effects were catching fire and dripping from the cymbals as Denny sang in what I soon realized was his patented style of lazy cool repetitive and repeating six shooter slow draw, and then came Josh with his rants of mind control and poison in the well. After the third song I looked up and took notice that we were on the banks of the Rio Grande. George Bush’s wall was before us hot to the touch and already broken out in rust and decay. A lightening storm danced across the sky horizontally but offered no respite from the heat. Only in this climate, in these times, could music that expressed the both the power of the psychedelic landscape, the paranoia of the dying world and the glory of speed and thirst that comes from years of driving on two lanes under an enemy sun be made.

After El Paso I was never the same. I carry with me now an expression that says to other like minded outsiders and collectors of the strange and sublime, do you see what is on my face, have you heard this sound, do you know what I mean when I ask for it Refried?" -Napo K. July 2010

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Live Session :: NPR's On World Cafe

Download the session tracks here.

Here´s a live session from NPR. It features some cool stripped down versions of the songs from The People's Key and an on air interview.

Set list::
01. Triple Spiral
02. Firewall
03. Beginner's Mind
04. Lua

Stream the session from NPR here.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

VIDEO: Bright Eyes :: Shell Games

---

Bright Eyes :: "Shell Games" :: The People's Key

---

Directed & Edited by: Nik Fackler ~ Cinematography by: Sean Kirby ~ Produced by: Dana Altman

---

Below the jump, the first video from Bright Eyes' The People's Key. A simple little short of the band playing in a chiaroscuro cabin during a snowy winter. It's one of the only that features a band playing music, songwriter Conor Oberst having a fit with a microphone in the center of it all. Highlights: it features a monkey and a baby kangaroo.




Website: conoroberst.com or thisisbrighteyes.com  

Facebook: facebook.com/pages/Bright-Eyes
Twitter: twitter.com/brighteyesband
MySpace: myspace.com/brighteyes
www.saddle-creek.com

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Interview : Performer Magazine

In the last issue of Performer Magazine, there was an interview with Bright Eyes that was unique because it was mostly focused on the recording technique of the band. The article is an interesting look at the creative process of the Conor Oberst, Nate Walcott, and Mike Mogis team. Read the interview below or at Performer.com: here.

The Reinvention of Bright Eyes By: Daniel Kohn
In the nearly four years since the last Bright Eyes LP, Conor Oberst has been very busy. Between his work with Monsters of Folk and the Mystic Valley Band, the singer/songwriter hasn't had a dull moment. While working with Monsters of Folk, Oberst learned what made his colleagues, M. Ward and Jim James of My Morning Jacket tick. "It was great, it was like taking a look behind the curtain and seeing how things worked," Oberst remarks. "I learned a lot from watching those guys work." And it shows on the latest Bright Eyes album, The People's Key. Like each of the band's previous records, there are a slew of appearances by many in the group's far-reaching network of friends. Performer caught up with Oberst to talk about the band's new studio, the direction of the group's sound and his songwriting process. Catch Bright Eyes in April when they perform at Coachella, and read our full review of The People's Key in our February issue. What made writing The People's Key different than the last few side projects you've worked on? Every record is sort of a different experience. To be back with Mike [Mogis, producer and multi-instrumentalist] and Nate [Walcott, trumpet and piano] was nice. We were making a whole record from start to finish in our studio, which we built a couple of years ago and haven't had a chance to use yet. We knew what we didn't want it to be, I guess, more than what we wanted it to be. We were burned out on the Americana, rootsy kind of thing, so we wanted to step away from that. Since this was the first time you've recorded in your new studio as Bright Eyes, what was it like working in the space from start to finish? Do you guys use Pro Tools or tape? We recorded this on tape. Mike has a hybrid approach. We record onto to tape then do dubs and overdubs on the computer. Working out of there was nice; it's basically attached to his house, so essentially it's like recording at home. It was really comfortable; it's a completely hi-fi setup so you have the best of both worlds. Was this your first time recording on tape? We've tried it a bunch of different ways. Actually, my last couple of solo albums I wanted to use pure tape the whole time, which we did and that was fun. Mike's general approach, which I've found to be the best sounding, is to do the additional tracking on tape for the louder instruments. How many tracks does the console have? We have a Neve console, which I think is 48 tracks. And we have a CPI console that's a little smaller - there are two studios in there. We actually worked in both of the studios a lot. Sometimes we'd start a song and me and Andy [LeMaster of Now It's Overhead] or me and Andy and Nate would be in one room while Mike would be working on another song. We were multitasking, you could say. How many rooms are there in the studio? Is there a live room and several other smaller ones? There are two full studios, and two big live rooms. The A studio is bigger in both the control room and live room, and obviously the B studio is a smaller version. And actually there's a C room that's in the middle that has a Pro Tools setup. It's very luxurious. Was this the first time as Bright Eyes that you guys have recorded an album from beginning to end in the same setting? We did it before at Mike's old studio in Lincoln, Nebraska. We made some records there. It's nice to record closer to home this time. Mike's got a wife and a couple of kids, so it's nice for him to go inside and eat lunch with his kids and come back out to work on some more joints. Did you go into the sessions with the songs prewritten or did you guys collaborate while in the studio? About half and half. Some of them we had already written and those became the template for the record. Time wise, it was about a year of recording with lots and lots of breaks so there was stuff written over the course of that time. Not so much in the studio, but after we were on a break for a month, I'd come back with a couple of more songs and we'd keep going. There are a lot of different types of songs on the album, ranging from indie-pop to some darker songs. Was this intentional? Yes. We're trying to make the songs as good as they could be individually, but once the record was on its way, like when we had four or five songs down, then the theme started to emerge. Then there was more of a deliberate effort to make it one piece. "Machine Spiritual (In The People's Key)" is one of my favorite songs on the album. What was the writing process for that one? That one I specifically remember writing. It was one of the earlier ones and I wrote it while I was in Mexico in this town called Tulum, which is a beautiful town on the coast. I was staying in a house with some friends. I wrote that one on the beach there... Did you bring what you had to the rest of the guys and just go from there? The song usually starts with a chord progression, either on piano or guitar then we'll add vocals or melodies. I'll just demo it real fast and bring it to the band, then we decide how to approach it. Sometimes we'll try several different versions and we'll talk about what the drums and bass should do. We're not a live band at all. We're a band because what you hear in the end is sort of a composite of all our ideas, but we're not a live band in the sense that it's very much a studio project. We've been doing this for a while so it's always good to mix things up and not get too set in your ways. This was an interesting record because we had unlimited time and space. We didn't feel the pressure in the sense that we were taking breaks between sessions. A lot of times the guys think about songs by living with earlier versions of them and saying "I like this" or "this isn't working" and we'll go back and try it another way. That was a good thing for us because with other records we were under the gun. No one was watching the clock or anything and I think the songs are better for it. What was it like having Bob Ludwig master the album? He puts magic on it; what he does enhances the record. He doesn't blow it out or compress the shit out of it. Mike said something really interesting, "When we showed up here with our mixes, there were little things in every song that I wish I would have done differently but they're too small to remix." They were little things that he heard in the songs and after the mastering, those little things were gone, which is a testament to just how good Bob is. It's been nearly four years since Bright Eyes released its last album. Why was there was such a long layoff and what made the group decide that the time was right to record? We all have pretty separate lives and we're very rarely in the same city. Mike is a full-time producer and he makes a lot of records. A lot of times Nate gets hired for strings or horn arrangements and last year he was on the road with Broken Bells. So we were working amongst all of our schedules and that's why it took so long. After the last record, it felt like we needed to have a break - I made records on my own and everyone did their thing. But I felt it was good to be back together. Between the last two records, there wasn't really much of a break and we toured the whole time. I think the last three years were a good way to cleanse the pallet and come back and feel new again. We wanted to turn the page and make something that was interesting to us, 2011-style.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes :: The People's Key

---

Bright Eyes :: "A Machine Spiritual (In The People's Key)"

---

Bright Eyes :: The People's Key ~ Saddle-Creek ~ Omaha, NE ~ February 15th 2011

Click here to hold this.

---

one inbred, transdimensional, reptilian alien baby; one lion of Judah with a Bright Eyes hair cut; one Hitler mustache with dread locks; one ladder to somewhere; and one for Conor Oberst.

---

The rumors about The People’s Key being Bright Eyes’ last album came from a certain magazine’s interview that has since disappeared from the web. Songwriter Conor Oberst said, “It does feel like it needs to stop at some point. I'd like to clean it up, lock the door, say goodbye.” By no means did he mean that he was going to hang up his guitar for good. When talking about Oberst, the president of Saddle Creek Records, Robb Nasel, told a local Omaha paper, “I think he feels like Bright Eyes has a certain association, for better or worse. I think he's trying to distance himself a little bit from what that means to people.” What that meaning is could be anything. It could mean being a sad singer or being branded with the blasphemous, close-minded “e” word or the obligation of opening every single record with a sound collage. 

On “A Machine Spiritual (In the People’s Key)” the chorus rings, “‘Please let me go,’ the prisoner moans, ‘No one has to know.’” It recalls the prisoner in Lifted’s “From a Balance Beam,” which says, “in all of my salvation I still felt imprisonment inside that cell…that is myself.” This "title track" is very much about being trapped in one's ways. The spiritual machine is a theory by the inventor of the synthesizer, a man named Ray Kurzweil, which becomes a clever reference to the prevalent use of synth on the album. It's an idea that eventually human consciousness will fuse with the internet and will no longer have to eat, sleep, or even die. In an interview with Spinner.com, Oberst said, "I think it's 100% achievable, especially when you think about how fast new machines invent newer machines, which invent the newer machines." So the idea becomes a reference to a self-perpetuating existence, trapped in some kind of code. The title is even more potent with its word ordering, making it seems as if the machine manufactures a person's spirit, pumping one out after the other. In an interview with NPR, Oberst said that "the people's key" was the key of "C," because "because you can hit all the white keys and you won't be playing out of key. It's the easiest key to play in for amateurs." The idea that the album is called this is in itself a bit of subtle self-deprecation as the "backwards black faced minstrel show" in the lyrics that "played it all from memory."

Distancing himself from some of the musical associations was a serious focus on every project beginning with the last Bright Eyes album, the rootsy and impressively orchestrated Cassadaga and through his fixed jam band “solo career.” Then Jason Boesel, drummer for Bright Eyes and The Mystic Valley band, said back in September of last year that the new record was “the best sci-fi emo album of the last twenty years.” It’s a stylistic direction that comes as kind of a shock at first, but when heard, it bears a strong resemblance to the psychic mysticism from Cassadaga. The People’s Key falls somewhere in the spectrum between 2005’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and the punk rock side project Desaparecidos. There are parts that twinkle electronic and others that blaze quickly with distortion, making for the most accessible Bright Eyes album to date. It’s all accompanied by Rastafarian ideology and alien campfire stories. Oberst explained to NME magazine that the sound was, “for lack of a better term, contemporary, or modern,” or maybe even futuristic.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes :: Cassadaga, or Turning from a Cartoon Back into a Man.

---

Bright Eyes :: Cassadaga ~ Saddle Creek ~ Omaha, NE ~ April 10th, 2007

---

To commemorate the release of The People’s Key, the first Bright Eyes record in four years (and most likely the last for a while), it seemed appropriate to look back at the last chapter, Cassadaga. The mix attached to this article is an interpretation, a juxtaposition, a blasphemy, and an alternate psychic dimensional version of the album that combines it with b-sides and tracks from the album’s Four Winds EP. The alternate name comes from a lyric in “Cartoon Blues,” and thus is presented Cassadaga or Turning from a Cartoon Back into a Man.

When the cartoon is drawn together, a new story emerges about underground fame and the conflicted relationship one has with the concept of home, as well as a tale of emotional fidelity. It’s about Cleansing or purging to find contentment or acceptance or redemption. Of course, these synonyms barely scratch the surface of some of the deep, indescribable abstractions present on every Bright Eyes record that makes multiple listens not just discoveries or explorations, but expeditions.

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Interview with Billboard

***UPDATE :: Another interview with interview magazine

Bright Eyes Interview with Billboard here.

Bummed that I narrowly missed doing an interview with Conor Oberst (literally by seconds, via e-mail), I found some of my questions answered on Billboard no less. It's weird to see Bright Eyes working with big music corporations like Billboard and Live Nation, after he was so vehemently against it in earlier days. Maybe he's obligated to.

Some key information in this very brief interview is that The People's Key ::

• It uses sound collage from Danny Brewer of Refried Ice Cream, a Texan psychadelic grampa group on Conor's label Team Love.
• There will be no acoustic instruments. Looks like possibly a return to more Digital Ash days. Conor says, "We're over the Americana, rootsy, whatever that sound is. People say country, but I never thought were very country at all. But whatever that element is or that aesthetic is, I guess it's worn a little thin for me these days." One of the minor criticisms I've always had was that the band tends to segregate their sound instead of fusing their interests (only minor, because every one of the aforementioned albums has been great). It'd be cool to see this rock and roll digi album that they're making with a few of their favorite Americana touches, like lap steel battling keyboards.
• Seems like the album is more socially than politically conscious. Conor breaks out this gem, which is a very weird thing, "There's this future that's coming that's really trying to, I think, divide us more and in a lot of ways strip us of our human nature in the sense that now when you walk into a room it's like 20 people all staring down at this little screen in their hands, typing away, not looking at each other." A strange occurrence which I think a lot of us have seen. 'I feel awkward, don't know who to talk to, I'll just whip out my phone.'

Interview

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Final Album :: The People's Key

"FUCKING GLOWING IN THE DARK"

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band :: "Synasthete Song"

Marking the end of...something important. Maybe not an era, not some kind of social revolution, but something more subtle, something more internal and existential for a generation of emotional misfits. Those are some weak words anyway for that impending excitement and bummer.

Bright Eyes will release their seventh and quoted "final" album on February 15th, 2011. Yet again, like the repeated theme of I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, a death, of Bright Eyes, coincides with a birth, Conor Oberst's birthday. The album is called The People's Key. An album Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley drummer Jason Boesel called, "The greatest sci-fi emo album of the last 20 years." Hinting that the album may sound something like the alien abduction odyssey that is "Synesthete Song" which was released on the Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band EP Gentleman's Pact.

From Saddle Creek ::

"Since 2006 the once revolving cast of Bright Eyes players has settled around permanent members Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott, with additional musicians joining them in the studio and on tour. Fully realized and bursting with charisma, The People’s Key is an assured and accomplished album, artfully arranged and filled with the engaging and mesmeric songwriting for which Oberst is renowned. Recorded in Omaha, Nebraska, at the band’s own ARC Studios, The People’s Key was produced by Mike Mogis and engineered by Mogis and Andy LeMaster."

Guest contributors also include Andy LeMaster, (Now It’s Overhead), Matt Maginn (Cursive), Carla Azar (Autolux), Clark Baechle (The Faint), Shane Aspegren (The Berg Sans Nipple), Laura Burhenn (The Mynabirds) and Denny Brewer (Refried Ice Cream).

Full track list for The People’s Key:

1 Firewall

2 Shell Games

3 Jejune Stars

4 Approximate Sunlight

5 Haile Selassie

6 A Machine Spiritual (In The People’s Key)

7 Triple Spiral

8 Beginner’s Mind

9 Ladder Song

10 One For You, One For Me

When talking about it being the last Bright Eyes album, Conor said something to the effect that he felt boxed in by some of the "Bright Eyes rules." Also, that he could only write so many songs about being lost. That always seemed like it was the first part of the story, just the exposition. Maybe with this album, he's get a little closer to finding some shoes and making his way out of the woods.

Website: conoroberst.com
Facebook: facebook.com/pages/Bright-Eyes
Twitter: twitter.com/brighteyesband
MySpace: myspace.com/brighteyes

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Live Set

Bright Eyes :: "Girl from the North Country"

This is a really good live set of Bright Eyes in their prime just before I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning came out, circa 2004 (10.10.04) at Austin City Limits. It's a really good quality recording and the performances are also of good quality. Conor is joined by Mike Mogis, M. Ward and Jim James for a set that is way better than any Monsters of Folk set. They even play a couple M. Ward and My Morning Jacket songs and at the end of the set, an amazing cover of Bob's "Girl from the North Country." The versions of the songs are interesting. Conor does his subtle live lyric changes as in "Waste of Paint," with the line "jerking each other off for positions." There's also an acoustic version of "Hit the Switch" which is excellent. The show happened a month before the November 2nd midterm elections during the Bush administration. Before "Landlocked Blues" Conor declares "I'll use their logic on you: if you vote for Bush, you're going to hell." It's hilarious, check it out around 52 mins in.

Download the whole set here.

f

Set list ::

1. Lua

2. Waste Of Paint

3. We Are Nowhere And It's Now (Conor, Mike Mogis)

4. Going For The Gold (Conor, Mike Mogis)

5. Hit The Switch (Conor, Mike Mogis)

6. O'Brien (M. Ward, Conor)

7. First Day Of My Life (M. Ward, Conor)

8. Train Under Water (M. Ward, Conor, Jim James)

9. Golden (M. Ward, Conor, Jim James)

10. Landlocked Blues (M. Ward, Conor, Jim James)

11. Girl From The North Country (M. Ward, Conor, Jim James)

12. At The Bottom Of Everything (M. Ward, Conor, Jim James)

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Video :: Coyote Song

Below the jump, a protest song by Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst.
http://www.thesoundstrike.net/

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes Sound Strike Tune :: Coyote Song // Live Desaparecidos

This is Conor Oberst's protest song for soundstrike.net against the Arizona immigration legislation, played live. Kind of reminds me of "Napoleon's Hat." There should be a real video coming soon. This has me thinking of the mysterious "last Bright Eyes album ever" due out supposedly this fall. I haven't heard anything about it since Rolling Stone last year. WHERE IS IT SEÑOR OBERST!?
Also here's some video of the Desaparecidos reunion:






http://www.thesoundstrike.net/

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Preview :: Bright Eyes & Neva Dinova - Two Jugs of Wine, One Vessel

Download "Bright Eyes - Happy Accident" (right click, save link as)

Conor Oberst has said that 2004's One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels is his favorite recording that he's ever made. Listening to it, you can sort of hear why. It's ripe with the studio experimentation of two guys doing whatever they wanted. For a split EP, the two artists collaborated to the blending point. It's an unbelievable surprise that Bright Eyes and Neva Dinova are revisiting the EP to add four new tracks (and it's still called One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels by the way). Out March 23rd.

First impressions are harsh, as they usually are for devoted fans. The nagging feeling is that these songs just don't sound like they fit with the old ones. Conor Oberst's voice even sounds different. Maybe just older. However, the songs probably need to given some time to outgrow biases, because the demolition of the track at the end of "Happy Accident" just inspires giddiness.

After he's been off gallivanting with Monsters and identity, hopefully this is a gesture of returning to his favorite old stomping grounds is a sign that the upcoming final full length this fall will still be the old Bright Eyes everyone knows and loves. Or at least that they're trying.

Here's a little teaser video:

Two Jugs of Wine, One Vessel:
1. Rollerskating*
2. Happy Accident*
3. Someone’s Love*
4. I Know You*
5. Tripped
6. Black Comedy
7. Poison
8. I’ll Be Your Friend
9. Get Back
10. Spring Cleaning

*new tracks

thisisbrighteyes.com

myspace.com/brighteyes

Read More ::

:: Read Less

Bright Eyes :: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

As 2005 was just waking up, the Omaha based Bright Eyes simultaneously released two albums: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. This isn’t a double album with a collection of twenty or so songs, but two unique pieces that are inextricable from one another. Awake is a tight, well focused analog folk record and Ash is a more experimental digital and electric album. The connections between the albums go much deeper than the realization that the same beach blanket lyric is in ‘First Day of My Life’ and ‘Take it Easy (Love Nothing).’ The records are compliments and foils, one not complete without its opposite.

The most intriguing thing about Bright Eyes has always been the lyrical mastery of self-reference, supernatural self-awareness, self-deprecation and even self-obsession. Through the prism that is Conor Oberst, a listener who pays close attention to the words will better understand the full spectrum of his human experience. This ranges from small feelings of emotional disparity in relationships to the overwhelming distress about the purpose of existence.

One of the most fascinating things about Bright Eyes is the progression throughout the albums of the “narrator’s” character and his interactions with fictitious loves, including the all too real Laura. It seems as if, since Conor began writing, he began telling a story and each album is another chapter. There is one theme that is a constant undercurrent behind Conor’s pen. In the song ‘Milk Thistle’ from his first solo record, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Mr. Oberst wrote the line, “I keep death on my mind like a heavy crown.”

Read More ::

:: Read Less